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Monday, November 4, 2013

Cat Tales: Bear

Bear hates me. I don't take it personally; Bear hates everybody. She's not even fond of other cats.

When I brought her in as a kitten, maybe 3 months old, she was a sweetheart. She purred and nuzzled and liked her belly rubbed.

She stayed in the guest bathroom for a while, until she had all her shots and the other cats became accustomed to her, and then I let her out.

What I think happened was that the other cats said, "Hey, you know what? She feeds us even when we're not nice." And Bear took that as a direction to never, ever be nice again.

She liked Max. He was the only cat she ever really interacted with. Now that he's gone, she's warmed up to Harriet some, and every once in a while I'm now allowed to touch the top of her head while she's eating her wet food. She growls quietly, but she doesn't stop chewing.

My great hope is that someday I'll be able to comb her, because since she doesn't groom herself (Max always did it), her fur is standing up in big chunks and mats. I just pulled a mat off her back that was literally the size and shape of a sandwich. All I really want to do is shave her bald and start fresh, but I think if I tried that, I'd need reconstructive surgery on my hands. And arms. (If she doesn't get brushed, you know her nails don't get cut either).

5 comments:

Thank you for these posts introducing the cats who live with you. I've really been enjoying meeting each of them! I had a black cat named Bear. He was a male and, although he had that overbearing (pun intended) male ego thing going on, he actually was a friendly and loving cat. I miss him a lot.

Even though I am a dog person, I am really enjoying your cat tails. How many cats do you have? Not judging or anything, we have 5 dogs. Only two arrived her with efforts made by us. The rest were "I can't take care of my dog properly, I know you like dogs could you", etc etc etc.

Bear even has a kind of challenging expression on her face, doesn't she?

Bear is quite a cat! So funny because my daughter has a cat named Ruby who doesn't like anyone except my daughter and they also have a cat named Max (but Ruby doesn't care for Max) Bear is an example of a cat is not yours, you belong to your cat.